Everyone should check out this amazing piece on New Scientist: "Imagine earth without people."

I’m not one of your humans-are-a-cancer greens. That kind of talk is philosophically vacuous and pragmatically disastrous. But even an I Heart People enviro like me can take a moment to marvel at just how much better the earth’s ecosystems would be without us.

The piece is not just casual people-bashing. It goes into quite a bit of depth, tracing the cascading effects of our sudden absence. As it says, “The humbling — and perversely comforting — reality is that the Earth will forget us remarkably quickly.”

Also of note in the same vein is this graphic from The Times.